Aleatoric Composition 1

The path to a finished work of art is often littered with the detritus of jettisoned ideas. Matthew Shlian and Michael Cina, two aesthetically distinct artists, find commonality in how they walk this path—stopping often, retracing steps, collecting, discarding, and finding surprising treasures concealed by the overgrowth along the way. When the two artists decided to collaborate on a series, we had no idea what to expect, but we knew that the combination of their unique styles would prove captivating.

The resulting series, a fusion of Cina's abstractionist canvas work and Shlian's organic formations, is titled in reference to the emphasis of chance in the process of creation. It is also a singular example of emergence at work: here the whole is not simply greater than the sum of its parts, but something altogether different. Aleatoric and emergent, yes—though perhaps the best word to describe it is simply, awesome. Artist Statement by Mathew Shlian:
Both Michael Cina's and my processes are rooted in experimentation. We test theories and probe. From our findings we then curate. Aleatoric music operates in a similar way, using chance as a way to frame ideas. Many initial ideas are discarded so that others may surface. The others, the ones that work for whatever reason, intentional or not, are kept and reworked. There needs to be this component to the work, this editing and curating from a pool.

There are rules then applied to this cloudless form. We react. We find form in formless, like a cloud catalogue or cloud atlas. It's a system of ordering the dischord—a way of making sense of things.

These pieces feel spatial or nebulous... a micro and macro at once. When I read I never understand the important parts first. I pull out the details and focus on them first, and then I have to work at understanding the bigger picture. This allows me to create a focused art; artists capture moments and say, "I find this interesting, don't you find this interesting?"